Movies News
Watch This Incredible Interview With the Real Person Mark Wahlberg Plays In 'Deepwater Hor…
Note: This video and post will spoil certain aspects of the film Deepwater Horizon
A few months after the catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig — an event that killed eleven people, led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history and is now the basis for a new movie hitting theaters this week — one of the survivors, Mike Williams (played by Mark Wahlberg in the film), sat down for an extensive interview with 60 Minutes, walking correspondent Scott Pelley through the events of that night.
Check it out below.
[embedded content]
The interview aired on 60 Minutes as a smaller piece, but the full, unedited 30-minute version was put online, and in it Williams takes us step by step through what happened. From an initial explosion that trapped him behind two massive fire doors to the critical choice he had to make in order to get off the rig, his story is an intense watch and you can see it slowly take a toll on him as he gets into the really ugly parts of what it took to survive.
What’s also fascinating about this interview is that when you watch Deepwater Horizon, you can see what elements of Williams’ story were embellished for cinematic purposes. Most of his arduous journey through the rig and then eventually into the water is captured accurately in the film, which jumps between various stories of those on the rig at the time, except Peter Berg’s movie does seem to create a more colorful relationship between Williams and Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez in the film), especially when it comes to those final moments onboard the Deepwater Horizon and how they played out for real versus how they play out in the movie.
For more on Deepwater Horizon, check out this two-part interview with Kurt Russell, who plays Jimmy Harrell in the film.